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JimBridgerBowl writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, The Bush administration wants access to Google's huge database of search queries submitted by users to track how often pornography is returned in results. This information would be used for Bush's appeal of the 2004 COPA law, targeted to prevent access to pornography by children. The law was struck down because it would have restricted adults access to legal pornography. Google is promising to fight the release of this information." From the article: "The Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn. As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn."

It can be a name that matches yours. Then you have to prove that you are not the matching person. Think Identity Theft.
It can be looking like another person. Then you have to prove that you are not that person. Think Misidentification.

Well, not if the president orders it, dummy. Thank God we here in the U.S. has a leader with the courage to come out and say "I am above the law as long as this war, which will never end, goes on."

I only wish he would take the next logical step and declare that presidential elections in a time of war could make us vunerable, and therefore they must be indefinitely suspended until we defeat terrorism.

Miserable failure??? This administration has liberated people from the evil clutches of dictators and tyrants in Iraq and Afghanistan, thwarted further 9/11 style attacks on the homeland, and steered the economy back on a steady course. That hardly sounds like a miserable failure to me.

Compared to the last two Presidential Administrations, this has been quite a success.

Before anybody mods this as a troll, I am directly replying to a modded up comment. Modding me down for simply disagreeing with your opinion is mod abuse.

That's the sort of naive, pre-September 11 talk that got three thousand American citizens killed. While you sniveling liberals are sitting up in your ivory towers, making all your pointless, academic distinctions, George Bush is plowing straight ahead, protecting our lives and our freedoms from pornographers and terrorists. This is why the reality-based community will never win; too much thinking, not enough doing.

Yeah, and next thing you know, the president will put up a porn site at whitehouse.com and then switch it over to a mortgage scam.

Mr. Bush, I know you didn't do too good in school, but go to hxttp://al4a.com. That is the best start for a variety of porn. It is even has it categorized into the misleading url hxttp://al4a.com/movies.html where you can pick from 51 different categories in either pictures (if you net connection is already too clogged from CARNIVORE) or movies. You have the complete variety from teeny girls, gay sex. bi sex, fat girl sex (Clinton!!!), BSDM, tranny porn, midget porn, redheads, brunets, big titties, little titties, big cocks, the who 9 yards (the cocks are not that big though).

What is the big deal with porn? Its great. Watching professionals have sex is many times cheaper, better and safer than picking up the drunk girl left at the bar right after last call.

Porn stars are often very intelligent, humble, and adjusted people. Listen to them talk in an interview.

Anyone who considers George Bush to be a miserable failure is'nt paying attention to the news. as a moral leader hes done a lot to deal with issues like abortion, balanced teaching of difference THEORIES in education (intelligent design). As parent says- most important- he has defended this country from its enemies! how do you call that a failure? At the moment I'm working on this planet as a genetic experimentor from the galaxy Arctaurus and i haven't made my mind up stem cells etc. but George is guided by the Bible on most things and he has my complete faith.

Maybe they'll just write a law requiring Google to make use of FF's new HTTP PING feature to send pings to $porno_search_term.cia.gov. Collecting the data on the fly is so much easier than subpoenaing to get logs.

All joking aside, I have a story about something vaguely-pr0n related.

Years ago, I worked for a school. The school used an ISP which provided a proxy service to filter out (amongst other things) porn. Thing is, the proxy was fantastically unreliable. Quite often, you'd find things getting through which clearly shouldn't.

Now, the only way to report this was to phone their helpdesk. Incoming email - including mail sent to their helpdesk - was also subject to a filter. So you couldn't email saying "www.sex.com isn't filtered" because the email itself would be filtered for the word "sex".

The icing on the cake was the people employed on the helpdesk were under strict instructions that if a customer was to say or do anything construed as being remotely offensive (such as direct them to a porn site or utter any vaguely sexual phrase), they were to terminate the call. Furthermore, they wouldn't accept that there could be anything wrong with their systems unless presented with irrefutable evidence.

A typical conversation therefore went like this:

Me: Hi, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system.Them: Sure, what's the problem?Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything.Them: Yes it does.Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example.Them: OK.Me: Are you behind the filter now?Them: YesMe: OK, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google.Them: That is offensive and I am terminating this call. <CLICK>

... redial...

Me: Hello, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system.Them: What's the problem?Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything.Them: Yes it does.Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example.Them: OK.Me: But understand that from now on this conversation is going to contain a lot of potentially offensive stuff, so I please don't cut the call off.Them: That's OK, I understand.Me: Right, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google.Them: Er... I don't think I should do that.

Google really blew it here. I for one look forward to our panopticon-possessing overlords!

This is a common problem when dealing with people. They piously clamor for what they're supposed to want.
Just imagine the improvement in governmental service if our legislative technimicians could see what people really want.

No one protected me from it. The first computer that I had sole access to was when I became the system administrator of the whole house. Its not that they didn't care, its that they didn't know. My parents are usually good at their job so maybe they knew I could handle it (very bad pun there, unintended).

Anyway. Nowadays I'm the one protecting my parents from such things, so that they can't browse or read my collection.